The legal jargon makes you feel overwhelmed. You must appear before a statutory officer to explain yourself.

In your anxiety you reach out to others. They advise you to get legal representation. The thought of how much this will cost adds further to your worry.

On average, this scenario is experienced by more than 100 Tasmanians every year when their conduct allegedly offends, humiliates, intimidates, insults or ridicules someone within one of the 14 protected attributes in Section 17(1) of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act.

I don’t know about you but I get offended often: someone pushes in on a queue; ‘Jesus Christ’ is used as a swear word; or an aggressive driver tail-gates me. Yet is using a government office to pressure ‘offenders’ a sensible course of action in a mature, democratic society? I don’t believe it is. 

We all know people who can be rude. It wouldn’t be surprising for them to intentionally offend or humiliate someone. Yet offence can easily be caused unintentionally. A political point of view, a religious belief, a strongly held conviction, or even a joke could be captured by this law even with a ‘reasonable person’ test.

Premier Will Hodgman believes the Act dampens free speech but the government’s solution, which was defeated in the Legislative Council last week, was to allow a defence for religious people. All Tasmanians deserve free speech, not just special categories like ‘religious people’.

Former Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson believes reform needs to go deeper, calling for the removal of Section 17(1) entirely:  “…the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act sets a low bar for restricting free speech by defining limits based on vague tests such as “offend” and “insult”’.  Australian Christian Lobby agrees.

What might offend or insult one might be no big deal to another – hence the ‘vagueness’. 

The current law restricts freedom of speech by legislating people into silence about subjects on which they would otherwise speak up. Many have told me they won’t say anything publically on the issue of same-sex marriage because they fear breaking the law. I know of media outlets that have refused to publish adverts because certain words, like ‘prostitute’ have offended people in the past and they are scared of falling foul of the law. 

This ‘societal chilling’ is dangerous. Robust debate is a vital ingredient in a healthy democratic society.

For every claim accepted by the Commissioner there are likely dozens of people who know the person accused of breaching the Act. That’s a lot of people potentially ‘feeling the cold’ – in fact tens of thousands over the years since these laws came into force.

People should feel free to discuss important social issues, like redefining marriage, without fear of breaking the law. Some may disagree, suggesting such fear causes people to ‘think before they speak’. Yet any positive, I believe, is far outweighed by the dangerous gagging of free speech in the community. 

Every freedom has its risks of abuse. People will say or write hurtful things, inappropriate things, and things we would never say ourselves. Yet this is the price of true freedom. Freedom without this potential is actually not freedom at all.